¾ Splice
(R)This came out in 2010, but I didn't see it until 2017. It's... kind of good. And kind of fucked up. Either way, I'm really glad I've finally seen it.
There are these two biochemists/genetic engineers named Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley). They work at a company called Nucleic Exchange Research and Development (NERD... yes, nerd), and they're also a couple. Together, they used gene splicing to create a new species, which has just two members, Ginger and Fred. The species isn't much to look at, but they exist just to produce a protein that can be used in creating drugs to help livestock, or whatever. Clive and Elsa want to move on to creating a species that would include human DNA, in order to create cures for human diseases. But their superiors forbid that, at least for the time being. So Clive and Elsa start their new experiment in secret.
It results in an embryo that grows faster than expected, and is birthed months ahead of schedule. There's a lot of ethical debate between the two scientists about whether to let the new creature continue living or not, and it's a debate that will recur at various points throughout the film. At first, the new creature looks... well, I'd say kind of like a featherless chicken, or something. (You know, if chickens could move like ninjas.) But within a month, it's grown into something that resembles a young human girl, though there are some definite differences. As she continues to grow, in some ways she seems more and more human (and eerily pretty), though in other ways... more differences are revealed. And all the while, Clive and Elsa have to keep her existence secret from everyone. Eventually, Elsa decides to name her Dren, after the girl uses Scrabble tiles to spell "NERD," which is written on Elsa's t-shirt. ("Dren" is "Nerd" spelled backwards, get it?)
Early on, Clive is concerned that Elsa seems to think of Dren as a pet rather than an experiment, but even then I thought it was pretty obvious that Elsa was thinking of her more as a daughter. And I think eventually Clive gets to that point, himself. But... well, it's complicated. And as I said before, fucked up. Dren is obviously intelligent, though she can't speak. But she's also dangerous (she has a tail with a stinger that delivers lethal venom). And of course it's pretty much impossible to fully explain right and wrong to her. (And her "parents" have their own difficulties with those concepts.) Anyway, I don't want to go into any more details of the plot.
So, um... it's interesting. I do think that most of the time, the movie fails to qualify as a "horror" movie, but it does get there, in the end. And the moral questions raised are... well, even in the real world they'd be complicated. Here, they're beyond complicated. But also kind of ridiculous; I really don't think real world attempts to create a chimera would end up anything like this movie. Then again, it's best that movies like this aren't realistic, because that would be boring. And this movie isn't boring. Disturbing in a lot of ways, but definitely not boring. And I guess that's all I want to say.